Status and Support

[Asso]

Another Enterprise story from you? That's great!

[Alelou]

You can try emailing support@fanfiction.net and making your request. Get your hungry audience to do it, too. It probably just takes enough people asking. It's great to feel inspired.

Have you checked Archive of Our Own and Live Journal?

I probably should be doing more writing, period. Right now I'm thoroughly distracted as I ponder us downsizing to a cheaper house (and the repairs to this house required if we were going to sell it) and/or job hunting. Looking up houses and jobs on the Internet is an awfully great time-killer.

[Linda]

You have my empathy in house shopping! I hope I never have to do that again. And I hope you get back to your writing soon. When it is going well, there is no better high, eh?

[Weeble]

Ugh moving, two of my wife's sisters just moved in the last few months. Both families are downsizing as the kids are (mostly) out of the house. Aside from the emotional and physical exertion, just being around folks that have to say "see ya" to long held possessions. Not fun.

[Alelou]

Eh, to be honest, moving is a wonderful opportunity to lighten the load. (It always worked well for that at work, too, which I can say after my division got switched from one building to another fairly regularly.) We moved a lot when I was a child, and while I never enjoyed the social disruption involved, I learned to appreciate other aspects of it. My son, on the other hand, will freak. He won't even let me replace the comforter he's had since he moved to his big boy bed twelve years ago. But it's time for him to start getting on with his own life anyway, so perhaps a little discomfort is in order.

This isn't definite yet. We have enough cushion to see if I can get a decently paying job by fall. Most of the reason we're already looking is that we're just plain intrigued by what's out there. I shouldn't be spending so much time on it, but looking at houses is kind of addicting.

[panyasan]

I probably should be doing more writing, period. Right now I'm thoroughly distracted as I ponder us downsizing to a cheaper house (and the repairs to this house required if we were going to sell it) and/or job hunting. Looking up houses and jobs on the Internet is an awfully great time-killer.

I hope you find a solution for your problems soon, Alelou, whether it is selling your house and/or job hunting. Frankly, I'm hoping for your that the last one is your solution and that your find a new job. I always had the feeling you really loved your house (especially the garden). But things can turn out for the best: maybe you will find a cheaper house that you still love to be living in, you never know...

EDIT: Just read your comment... yes, looking for new houses can be very addictive....

I used to have a very boring job (but nice colleagues and it paid the bills) and lots of time to think about writing. Two years ago my firm asked me if I could apply to another job - which was a promotion - and I loved my new job, learn new things every day, however.... I need to focus on my job more than before, so only in my break, during my walk through the woods I can think about scenes.

Besides I think my inspiration is running a bit dry..., only to find inspiration for three stories World of Ice, T'Pol of Vulcan and a Hoshi/Archer story (working title Shattered dreams). The new chapter of World of Ice is written, but not beta-ed yet and I am thinking to write T'Pol of Vulcan as a whole first, instead of making it a work in progress and publishing chapters with lots of time between them. I also like to write something light and funny, but my guess my life is too happy to write something funny....

BTW Alelou, chapter 23 is annoyed. Why does chapter 22 gets all the attention, while chapter 23 was the last chapter of North Star...

[Alelou]

? I don't understand the last question. I thought I got more reaction to 23 than to 22. (It's been so long I don't really remember, though...)

I'm glad you're enjoying your busy job (especially since it takes you away from us -- at least that's for a good thing! -- and it's also good to hear you're updating).

Google makes house-hunting too diabolically interesting. You can 'drive by' places with their videos ... you can see them from the sky and look at their neighbors ... hell, last night I was comparing the farm I'm interested in with an old 1945 USGS survey map... (Appears it's so cheap for 20 acres because most of those acres are wet.)

[panyasan]

Enjoy your house-hunting! It's fun, isn't it?

? I don't understand the last question. I thought I got more reaction to 23 than to 22. (It's been so long I don't really remember, though...)

Sorry I was vague - I was referring to your signature on the forum, Alelou - it says : Can you believe it? Finally: chapter 22...

I fully understand that you got more reviews for chapter 23 than of chapter 22. Chapter 22 was good, but chapter 23 is a guilty pleasure of mine. I just loved how Trip stood up for himself and T'Pol against Jon even when I really like your Jon in North Star.

[Alelou]

Oops. Thanks. Need to fix that.

[panyasan]

Finally sat down to do some work on North Star last night and this morning it's all gone. Grrr.

It isn't that I can't recreate it. I'm more concerned with what this indicates about my subconscious level of interest. Apparently I'm just not in the mood to get to Vulcan. (I never did like deserts.)

Maybe you can avoid the desert by having them travel only by night and/or wandering around in a lot of desert caves (and while T'Pol is showing her appreciation for Trip, T'Les shows up... ).

Hope your muse returns quickly!

[Alelou]

Thanks, Panyasan. (I hope my muse does a better job of saving files next time!)

[Alelou]

Wrote some that I'd lost before over again, saved it, wrote a brand-new scene, saved it, started another brand-new scene, accidentally grabbed a corner of the window, and lost the whole last batch of work. Damn it. I've realized that every time the display of an Office file is affected in any way it immediately crashes.

I'm home sick today instead of back to work. Probably ought to use the time to order a new Office suite, since one side benefit of working at the college is cheap software. I'm not sure whether I should try to also upgrade to Windows 7 from Vista at the same time, since my understanding is that an updated Windows Vista is pretty much the same thing. Any thoughts from the tech geeks out there? Do I need to allocate Office more memory to chew on or something? I'm not having issues with other programs, just Office (2007).

[Cogito]

Are you saving your scenes in separate files? I would only expect any OO crashes to affect files that were actually open at the time of the crash, and even then I'd have expected that the previously-saved version would remain intact and at worst only your latest unsaved changes would be lost.

[Alelou]

No, no, it's all in one file -- I write, I save, I add some more, I forget to save as compulsively as I should... and the most recent work is lost.

It happens in Excel too, so I think it's an Office issue. But of course, Microsoft diagnostics can't find anything wrong.

I should probably uninstall and reinstall, but I'm a little worried it will tell me my product key isn't good anymore or something like that.

[Cogito]

I recommend that you take yourself over to http://www.filehamster.com/ and download the free version of their personal revision control product. Once you have installed it and configured it with the directories you want it to monitor, it will automatically take a copy of any file you change, and squirrel it away somewhere safe. No matter what disaster strikes your original file, you can go back to any of the previous versions. The big advantage of this over any other version control system I've used (of which there are lots) is that it all happens transparently and automatically. Just tell it to monitor 'My Documents' and short of a hard disk failure you should never lose another document. Just remember to click the 'save' button each time you get to the end of the paragraph.